Finding Our Way - The Camino de Santiago Documentary

if you're here watching this there's a good chance that you've heard of the fabled camino de santiago before and want to know more about it maybe you're just interested in the logistics what to expect where to stay how much it costs how to prepare for it what to eat what to pack or maybe you're more interested in the experience of it what it's actually like to walk 15 miles every day for a month or more how to make friends along the way what sleeping in an albergue is like is this camino actually like the movie that i saw about it or maybe you're more interested in the spiritual aspect the quest the connection to yourself the chance to have a transformative experience the chance to truly disconnect from everything else for a little while and make some real change in your life whether in your mind on the scale or perhaps to connect deeper with your faith [Music] everything you could want to know about the camino is in here but first for those of you that are yelling at your screen right now what is this kamino thing you speak of get to it already i hear you i hear you i'm super glad you're here so that i get the chance to introduce you to something really amazing let's start at the beginning [Music] in short the camino de santiago is a really really long walk that people have been doing since the 1100s but it's so so much more than that sorry stopping for a quick history lesson here you see way way way back in the day people of the celtic and iberian tribes used to walk an early roman trade route across what is now spain to the land's end on the atlantic coast of galicia it was written that it was quite a spiritual experience to make it to the end of the world to the infinite sea in fact the romans called this point right here finis terry which translates to the end of the world [Music] much later a legend was spread that the apostle saint james's remains were brought to santiago de compostela after he was martyred by hirod santiago was the largest and last town on this extremely historic route the legend of the apostle and his remains had officially turned this route from a beautiful walk into a full-blown pilgrimage known today as the way of saint james or the camino de santiago fast forward to the 17th century when through an odd combination of the reformation the enlightenment and the multitudes of wars in europe the camino was gradually suppressed in fact louis xiv of france outlawed his subjects from going to santiago in order to stop trade with spain entirely the camino fell into disfavor and disrepair but was never fully abandoned only hundreds walked the camino each year during this time it stayed that way for hundreds of years until suddenly against all odds in the 1980s the camino de santiago sprung back to life tens of thousands of pilgrims turned into hundreds of thousands over the next few decades until we reached today see what i mean it's parade now when 300 000 or more pilgrims are supposed to walk the camino de santiago just this year there's already like 20 000 people out there so what caused this ancient pilgrimage all but abandoned for centuries to suddenly come back to life why now what about our modern age has made this old and timey ritual of walking all the way across the country to see the remains of a headless saint more relevant now than ever [Music] so explained at its most basic the camino de santiago is a journey done on foot or bicycle from basically anywhere to santiago de campostella [Music] to be honest i'm not sure that makes me feel any better the most popular route and the one i would recommend if you do it your first time is the french way this is a 500 mile route that begins in st champion pour goes up and over the pyrenees and all the way across spain until you reach your destination of santiago most people fly into paris or barcelona and then they take a train from there to the starting point at st john here what time do they close apparently now oh no this is where you meet us we're lisa and josh like i haven't seen people working a really long time and i'm really excited to go through it there's like maps and they give you an itinerary of how suggested itinerary of how you should do the walk and how much elevation gain there is on each day and they're just they're so prepared this was our first day but the camino for us really started six months ago in hawaii what are you about to go do out there lisa we're gonna go surfing you got a good instructor today we'll see i'm just kidding when one of our friends off-handedly mentioned to us his experience walking the camino de santiago and from that day the idea kept growing in our minds so we had to call him and learn more i mean i was really like in a big time of transition in my life and i think a lot of people you meet will be in this time of transition right to realize you're not alone in that and to realize you know we're kind of all in it together there really is a sense of community i think that was so surprising to me you sound like you miss it oh man i'd love to be there he made it sound almost romantic walking through beautiful spain while meeting amazing people drinking amazing wine eating all the food and coming out the other end a changed and better person it sounded like exactly the thing that we needed a quest we had been looking for a quest for a while [Music] the camino offered a chance to focus on ourselves a routine a way to connect both more to each other into the things that each of us care about it offered challenge new friends great memories and a potential to do something that we previously had thought was impossible for us we were looking for control consistency to lose 20 pounds adventure i mean basically a transformative experience in just about every single aspect of our lives the expectations were absolutely unreasonably sky high and unrealistic we were way off we just didn't know it yet not only that but we were very very almost comically unprepared for the journey that we were about to start i mean just look at us oh this right here is the uh the first of many steps of me becoming my dad our sleep sack which is made out of polyester and hopefully should protect us from bed bugs this is a water bottle carrier because we realize although the coat epoxy bags are really cool they don't have a place for your water bottle so i'm going to hang this from there dursh's dad hat should i try it on okay [Music] do i look like your dad hmm another yoga strap because i think we're convinced that it works oh that's it what a great haul you can't cook can we do it you did it wow feels pretty good already because it has nothing in here nice this is ready as i'm gonna be so you got your bag your sunscreen your bottle of water your pilgrim's passport it's time to start this thing [Music] day one it's already falling apart the first day is a bit of a trial by fire really good it's the hardest day of the camino by far and looking back on it i honestly wouldn't have wanted it any other way it is basically straight uphill for about 10 to 15 kilometers as you go up and over the pyrenees and then you have to drop down an elevation all the way back down to our first town in total about 26 kilometers this is the first time i've ever walked across the land border and especially one that's so far away right now we're in france and then once we get up and over the pyrenees and start going back down we're gonna be in spain that's pretty cool we were down there 30 minutes ago the rain lit up for a little bit but we still got the ponchos on just in case it changes its mind how's it going oh you know it's kind of discouraging to see non-stop hill but we're going we are up in the clouds now can't see too much visibility is maybe 20 meters ahead of us we are definitely approaching deliriously tired at this point we are about a kilometer 20 i think so five or six more to go just everything's really really tired and of course in true joshua lisa fashion we haven't really been good at taking breaks we just keep going slow but we keep going our camino friend that we've seen about a hundred times today yay was a video compared us to a diesel engine he said we're very slow but once we get started we just keep going i do think that's very much our hiking strategy would clunk lunk be proud i'd think so if it started up [Music] this is seriously so magical we're walking this forest with fog and you just hear these bells chiming you see all these horses just wandering by with their little bells on their neck so beautiful and i think we found a place for us to sit finally and take a break [Music] last one kilometer we're so close i mean what an absolutely beautiful hike but we're about done i think our feet are ready to give out [Music] this is great these are really nice i was not expecting this very cool they gave us these at the front and i think this is the pillowcase and i think this is the bed covering which is very exciting now you'll notice our accommodation here it's basically a hostel in a church [Music] very awake these are the albergues the traditional place to sleep at night for pilgrims these are exclusively accessible just for the pilgrims those that are holding the pilgrims passport these are by far the cheapest places to stay on the camino costing anywhere from totally free to a maximum of maybe 12 euros a night there's a variety of different places to stay along the way let me explain i'll start with on the lowest end is in the cheapest of all of them and those are the pilgrims hostels and usually they will be big big hostels there will either be one or two per city and they'll just say poor peregrinos which means for pilgrims like us the people walking the camino we've seen prices for these anywhere from eight euros all the way up to about 20 and some of them for free but with a mandatory donation the next kind of accommodations are the hostels that are privately owned so these are places that can be found on booking.com even hostileworld.com those usually range from about 12 euros to 20 euros and they even have private rooms all of the peregrino hostels and some of the private run hostels will keep half of their inventory available for people just walking in you can just walk in and they do this because for some people on the camino that's how they find their accommodation every single night i think with covid and the changes that have happened this year now it seems like reservations are more of a thing and calling in advance and the last type are the privately run hotels right along the camino these vary widely in prices but we've seen private rooms all the way up to 80 to 90 euros now about reserving these places as you're on the walk this is the steepest learning curve for us of this whole thing okay so we've just spent the past probably three hours calling every possible hotel in all of pamplona and any of the surrounding area that's even kind of close everything is booked out 100 we couldn't find a single thing and i don't know to think i don't know if we're using the right tool or the wrong tool or the wrong website or something like that but everything is booked out so i don't know exactly what we're supposed to do because it also looks like the next couple of cities that we were planning on walking to are also entirely booked out we're feeling a little bit discouraged this one especially this right here was our first real test on the kamino keep in mind that we did this in 2021 and half of the hotels and hostels were closed for covet or just forever because they didn't survive the pandemic the next day was walking to pamplona and there was literally nothing available i don't know we might just have to walk and see if we can book something on the way we had no idea what to do were we gonna walk 15 plus miles get there and find that there was nowhere to sleep this was only our third day and we didn't really know how to solve the problem we needed help [Applause] [Music] okay started day three i'm not even sure that we can go this way pretty much every single day on the camino we start off and we go all right let's go and then we walk out the door and then we're like uh was this the right way do we even know where we're going and today for real we don't know where we're going yeah not at all not at all so despite spending another three hours or so looking to try to find some place to stay in pamplona tonight we didn't really succeed we haven't found anything we called about 40 places and absolutely nothing has any availability so it turns out that each of the hostels at least the ones for pilgrims like us they allow people to reserve and advance half the rooms and then the other half of the rooms you can just kind of show up and you got to show up right when they open and then the other half of the rooms you can just take as you walk in but we are definitely slow walkers we're not trying to you know sprint this thing so we're definitely not going to be the first people to arrive we'd have to walk 13 miles in about four hours with absolutely no stops it's possible but real fast we're not sure exactly what to do and we're just hoping that we can just get a place to sleep tonight [Music] oh yeah this was our second day in a row of trying to do laundry hang the laundry to dry and then have it and then have it rain overnight [Applause] [Music] last night in a flurry after calling a bunch of places and getting we're full or completo nothing no rooms available sent out a bunch of emails to places places that we couldn't get a hold of by phone and we got a response today they have a double room for us we got it we have a place oh we're so happy good job the camino lives on [Music] oh [Music] i'd always wondered what a beard tastes like after walking 14 miles in the sun let's find out oh my god these potatoes bravas they're the perfect thing after a long hike i've been arriving at basically the exact wrong time every single day at the end of the camino it looks like uh it looks like lunch is only served between like 2 and 4 p.m everywhere that we go and we normally show up in the town right around 12. we're hungry and then we go to a restaurant and they look at us like we're crazy because we're trying to order food i guess two hours before anybody actually eats lunch but the thing i am loving is the siesta culture and i think i've been preparing for siesta culture my entire life um my legs don't work so good but we have a room now yeah i think there's something to be said about under-planning the camino there's a certain magic about it we were forced into planning many days ahead but from what we learned along the way from people who had done this before booking ahead was the exception not the rule like it was this year we kept hearing over and over from people on the trail the mantra the camino provides and this was certainly true today and just about every single day ahead of us it can feel great and productive to figure out every day every hotel you're going to stay at every little detail of this whole thing before you start but if you can manage to leave a bit of space a bit of uncertainty in the trip you also leave some room for the camino to surprise you with something amazing and it usually will [Applause] you'll meet all sorts of interesting characters along the way if you want to you also don't have to at all this whole experience could range from one super long tapas which are called pinchos in some part along the way and wine crawl across spain all the way to a fully solitary month of just walking and silence it is whatever you want it to be and it is up to you to do it the way that you decide you can be whoever you want to be on the camino and approach it however you want the freedom is beautiful the greeting of the pilgrims from one to another is buen camino you'll hear this 100 times a day every day as you go through countless beautiful small villages and shockingly busy large towns people will pass you some will chat with you and there's never any expectation of staying with any particular group or person for any longer than you want to everyone is on their own kamino unless you choose to walk it with someone else meeting people along the way is however one of the best parts of the experience [Laughter] solitude and the room and space to think and process whatever in your life needs processing is however the actual best part [Music] now if you're anything like us this is about the time maybe 50 or so miles into this thing where you start feeling uncomfortable [Music] not necessarily physically uncomfortable just emotionally and mentally uncomfortable i think we're losing it we are i don't know we're struggling today we're wondering why are we walking this what's the purpose why are we struggling so hard why can't we stay present and why are we thinking about counting down and how many days left it's it's rough when you're in your own thoughts for this long and you've got i don't know 400 miles to go to santiago why do i still think of that one time in high school that i got super embarrassed by brad when he hit me in the head with the dodgeball in gym class i still hate bread to this day all these thoughts just start invading your mind don't worry this is all totally normal and as our camino sherpa dan told us this is where all the juices everyone keeps saying you can do the camino your way i don't know that we figured out our way yet he was right to make change in your life you have to feel at a minimum uncomfortable the more change you want the further from your current self that you want to get the more discomfort you're going to feel in that process the camino just brings that right to the surface and puts it right in front of your face and asks how bad do you really want this only you can answer that question i would recommend after you start that you take some time to really really think about why you're doing the camino you have all day to walk most of which will be by yourself some of which will be with other pilgrims but take some of that alone time and really get to the center of why it'll be different for everyone and you can share it with others or not up to you there's no wrong way to camino it's quite literally all about finding your way something that i'm learning the hard way on this route is that it doesn't matter how fast or how slow you go the first day i was noticing we were kind of the last people to leave and maybe always almost the second to last people arriving to the next town but we are being reminded constantly by our friends the other pedigree knows here that it just doesn't matter how fast or how slow you take this camino it's all your own way [Music] oh you're a fan yes yes i mean the terrace is cool we have a fan [Music] oh so nice to be sitting down uh i'm in love with this hostel that we're hanging out at we've got a private room for 40 euros i just got my beer and some gummy worms out of a vending machine which are a few of my favorite things and yeah i am really really glad that we are staying an extra night here this area just feels a lot more our speed than pamplona is it's a lot more relaxing it's a lot quieter just feels more us and i think honestly our bodies are still kind of adapting to this new load that we're putting them under we're walking a little over a half marathon every single day and this is our fourth day in a row and honestly our bodies are just not that used to it yet so i think we need to give it a little bit of time to rest and i couldn't think of a better place to do it than here [Music] on our first real lazy day of the camino we realized suddenly that we had a lot less time in europe than we had originally thought you see you only get 90 days out of every 180 throughout most of the eu and we had spent more than we thought throughout this trip before we started walking it was theoretically possible for us to make it but we would end up walking 30 or 40 miles per day or more to make it on time we could feel the clock ticking again but didn't know what to do yet oh well for now let's go get some dinner and let future us solve this problem [Music] eating in spain appears to be a lot harder of a task than we had originally thought it seems like we're doing everything wrong and we're not really sure how to do it right we just sat down at a restaurant uh the table was open sat down at the table and then four seconds later the guys shoot us away and some other people who had just gotten there got our table they did have drinks in their hands so it made me think that perhaps they had reservations or they were waiting for that table yeah i don't know how to tell or who has reservations or who doesn't [Music] were there at the wrong times ordering the wrong things and honestly we're starting to make waiters upset at us which means that it's our fault it means that we'd have to change we have to understand a little more just there's just too many assumptions going around i think we have a lot of research to do a lot of learning of spanish yes [Music] once again the last one's out like the very very last one we gotta get but at least we've got a quarter of a baguette for breakfast it's not hard at all goodbye princess [Music] so beautiful [Music] okay so i did a bunch more research about how eating works in spain and why we're having so much trouble and why everything seems a little bit off and i found some really interesting stuff so at first is breakfast and our typical breakfast lines up with what the normal traditional spanish breakfast is which is just some bread like a baguette croissant and some orange juice and a coffee after that between like 10 30 and noon they'll typically have another snack which will be some sort of sandwich thing then the biggest meal of the day lunch and this is usually between about 2 or 4 p.m and when i say between 2 and 4 p.m i mean it lasts the entirety of that time this is one of the things that we're having the hardest time adapting to is sitting down and just eating lunch and doing nothing else for two to three hours because of the way that restaurants work in the united states you don't normally take your time eating any meal when you're in a restaurant that's not the case here as a result of that this lunch meal is usually just fully a break from work okay next up at meal number four out of five is the afternoon snack this is between about 5 30 and seven and this is kind of very similar to the early morning snack except it's usually some sort of sweet treat or sometimes the same sandwich like what we had earlier okay and then last up for the fifth meal of the day is dinner and this is usually between let's say 8 30 to 9 all the way until midnight most restaurants won't even open up here until say 7 or 7 30 and a lot of times their kitchens won't open up until 8 30. and contrary to the way that we think about this in the united states dinner is usually a really really light meal but especially during dinner time this is the meal where you're there you're sitting down you're having a couple drinks and you're hanging out at the restaurant for somewhere between three and four hours now you might be thinking that this seems kind of odd it just seems like everything's time shifted or it's just all off by about an hour or two and you'd be right apparently there's a specific reason why the spanish eat so late or why the time has shifted a little bit behind back in the 1940s during world war ii the general at the time decided that he wanted spain to be on the same time zone as germany this didn't match with all the other countries that were in their same longitude and latitude ever since then spain has just always been ahead of the uk and time zones even though they're in the same exact longitude as you know from our channel we constantly talk about our struggle with moving way too fast and it's often really hard for us to slow down there's something about the spanish way that makes me feel i want to work towards that so just to be clear we're far from experts on this subject this is just what we've learned from doing this for a handful of days and from talking to a couple people from spain and having them explain it to us i really think there's something admirable and something for us to strive towards to actually be able to sit still for long enough to enjoy a four-hour meal kind of inconceivable we made sandwiches because all of our train connections are super tight very surprised so i think tonight our challenge for the day is gonna be to try to just sit there and very almost comically slowly enjoy our dinner okay so eeny says he's in a bar before the bridge close to the place where we spotted the big red tomatoes i asked him to send me a location i remember the big red tomatoes not all big old tomatoes no big red tomatoes anywhere else here in spain [Music] we just got back from the best night hanging out with our new friends on the camino we actually hung out for four hours just hanging out chatting learning spanish and english all together it was a good time and we got to sit by this most beautiful beautiful church our slowest meal ever we are feeling pretty exhausted and we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow but you know the drill it's 20 kilometers to the next town rinse and repeat [Music] that's quite a start to our hike blasted out of there with the fire alarm that wasn't actually a fire alarm at six in the morning actually it was 5 30 5 30. so now it's six and we are on the trail we wanted to start early anyway right who needs sleep yep [Music] the next few days are very very flat hot and boring oh yeah did i say what time of year you should do this the best is spring or fall april or september summer is just too much for most people we did it in august that was a big mistake he was getting really warm right now there's no shade [Applause] [Music] everyone keeps saying you can do the camino your way i don't know that we figured out our way yet i think we thought our way was just to walk all 500 miles all the way to santiago but what do you do when you're just freaking bored [Applause] oh solid swing i don't know what i'm saying british voice people don't watch baseball oh god [Applause] i won [Music] starting the day off in the more spanish way with just a giant baguette and a croissant and uh yeah we have our longest walk yet today today we're going all the way from los arcos to legronio which is about 28 kilometers which can't do the math off the top of my head but it seems like it'd be about 18 miles so yeah as a result of that we had to say goodbye to a couple friends they were heading further down the trail it's always a sad moment never gets easier yesterday was truthfully a pretty low day for us when we started off the day wrong with a fire alarm at 5 30 in the morning that certainly didn't help and we just kind of felt really really bored all day usually if we get bored of a place or something we just move on go somewhere else and with this there's not something else to do it is just walk for six to eight hours and then make it to your hotel maybe grab some dinner and then head to bed and it's the exact same thing every single day i don't know i guess yesterday it just really started getting to us and i have a feeling that everybody that comes in the camino kind of goes through the same crucible that we're going through right now because there's just nothing to do but just walk all day every day and that's a very different shift and that's also one of the reasons why we wanted to do this in the first place it's just honestly a little more difficult to adapt to than we thought so after wrestling with this quite a bit the last couple of days we talked about ways that we could change this we talked to some friends who've done the camino we've talked to people who are walking the camino now and i think it all comes down to doing what's best for you which might mean slowing down which might mean taking breaks and might mean switching it up walking some days not walking others a lot of people take buses on this route one the camino is probably a little bit too long considering how many other plans that we have in europe and how long our schengen visa is you only get 90 days out of every 180. i think one of the biggest things and that's hard for me honestly is to take any guilt away from that and to try to do this thing to anyone else's standards of what like the right way to do it is just seems like it would be doing it wrong we're seeing so many shoes just like this one along the way it seems like this hike especially with how hard it is is where uh it's where a lot of pair of shoes go to die i can see why at this point we had to make a decision were we gonna commit to walking at an insane pace 30 or 40 miles per day just to be able to finish the camino before a visa ran out we were having a tough time already with the camino in a lot of ways looking back on this moment we realized that the source of our unhappiness was that we were doing someone else's kamino we were listening more to the guidebooks to the hundreds of comments on our youtube channel telling us all about the right way to do the kamino some in a more forceful way than others the thing that i really just want to escape and hopefully work on for the next few days is changing my mentality it's no longer about how many miles we walk or where we make it do we make it to santiago by foot or by bus or by bike or how fast we go had we decided to stick with it at this point keep doing the kamino the way that the internet and the guidebooks kept telling us to do it we very likely would have just quit this whole thing in just a few days that would have been an absolute shame because as soon as we started doing things our own way walking the camino de santiago changed immediately from being a painful march across spain into a beautiful relaxing amazing and truly unique experience we keep stopping for blackberries they're so good we keep saying okay let's go that's enough and then we find some good ones like here's a good bunch it was our first real actual legit lunch break we sat down for two beers and a potato tortilla as they call it here and i'm amazed this is so nice this will get us through let's stop here for a moment to talk about religion on the camino this is a very common misconception about the kamino that you have to do it for religious reasons well this is indeed a pilgrimage with direct religious roots from our experience there is absolutely no requirement anywhere along the way to be religious or connect with any particular faith no one is going to stop you at the start and ask you if you believe in jesus or force you to attend a mass in fact when you start they ask you at the pilgrims office about why you are doing the camino there are a few options religion is one of them but so is health connection to yourself tourism and the ever-giving other option there's no right or wrong reason to do the camino i would say that most people that we met along the camino were doing it for a multitude of reasons almost everyone wanted to meet more people to lose some weight to get in better shape but the thing that united every single person on the kamino was wanting some sort of change in their lives it doesn't matter if this changes to connect deeper with your faith like the way you look in the mirror more get a bit of distance from the problems of your life back at home process things that happened in your past taste every single wine across northern spain or literally anything else wait is this actually just a free wine fountain your reasons are your reasons and there are no wrong answers and you don't have to tell anyone if you don't want to [Music] so i just wanted to quickly answer the question that we've been seeing a lot of and that is will i get lost when i'm on the camino i think it'd be really really difficult to get lost in this because literally every 50 to 100 feet there's either a bright yellow arrow such as that one right there or the one behind me here just right there and what we've experienced is that basically every time that we don't know where to go if we just stop and look around for a second you'll see that there's a symbol telling you exactly which way to go so as long as you're following the sage advice of ace of base and opening up your eyes and seeing the signs i think it's honestly pretty difficult to get lost and i wouldn't worry about it too much [Music] hey piano [Music] [Applause] pretty good [Music] there's nothing better than taking those shoes and socks off at the end of the day oh my god oh look at your tan line i know my sock tan josh you can take your socks off so we were walking around the city and we just had such a great time and i think we're just going to stay another night what do you think yeah like the food the vibe around here just had enough but didn't feel too big i don't know it felt really cool so we're gonna slow down a little bit we're not in a hurry and uh check this place out for one more night [Music] on the camino we've been walking every single day and by the time we get to town and shower and get something to eat we only have like an hour left before we have to go to bed and rinse and repeat and do the same thing the next day being outside and wandering the streets of la gronio made me realize how much i enjoy just being in a place for a while petrol stroll what crawl we're going to go to kai laurel in case you didn't understand and we're going to do it pinchos crawl crawl peter best i can tell the thing that you're supposed to do here is uh get some pinterest and each place will have its own kind of specialty pinto that only they sell and then get a very very economical glass of wine this is probably like a euro finish those up and then just move on to the next place down the road i think it's amazing after going back and forth over the decision of what to do next and spending two awesome nights in legrono we knew exactly what we needed to do [Music] and now we're in madrid [Music] just to go back up north again in the few days after arriving in surya things really started to come together for us learned a new skill have you we are in saria and kicking off our first day of this second leg of our kumino feels like a completely different camino just look at where we are [Music] we felt like we had all the energy in the world our feet were lighter the miles just flew by as we enjoyed the beauty of the world around us we were getting into the rhythm figuring out how to make it all work we were looking at things as fun challenges instead of hurdles [Music] this portion of the camino is absolutely beautiful the scenery is completely different from that of nevada and the casio region just so lush and green it's beautiful with all these changes and with us being much much happier on the camino we still hadn't figured out one super important thing that we needed to stop more often while we were walking up to this point we would just keep walking all day until we reached the next town rarely if ever stopping for lunch or having a coffee break along the way this was a big mistake and we were missing out on so much [Music] another nice new thing about there being so many towns is that there's a lot more of these amazing little cafes every about two miles or so one of these pops up and it's just absolutely filled with pilgrims all getting sandwiches and spanish tortilla and coffee and it makes for a really nice easy way to break up the day we're about halfway through our walk right now so i figured we'd stop some more miles to go not so bad c is for cookie that's good enough for me it's the second place that we've seen along the route from saria on where people set up little tables where you can get fruits and cookies and pastries for donation only it's really sweet and sweet [Music] pretty epic way to enter puerto marine [Music] [Music] okay just sit back and relax you're not gonna try it no this is for you your feet hurts okay bye enjoy thank you bye it's been a while since we've had this but we decided to go with the menu of the day or the pilgrims meal and there's so many options you get a first plate and a second plane each of those plates have like nine different options and it comes with bread and wine we haven't had a meal like this since ron says good morning good morning there's already like 20 000 people out there [Music] i think i'd do this too oh big old decision let's go okay there's something about today that makes it feel like a pilgrimage i think it's because there are so many people so many pedigrees on the walk today it's kind of nice today feels like we're all a part of something larger now [Music] see what i mean it's parade now so today is our longest day of walking left it's about 24k today all the way to palestine right and i think maybe hopefully we're finally starting to get the rhythm of this whole camino thing down i think we're starting to figure it out i'm still not sure if this actually does anything this yoga belt hip belt replacement strap it only took 150 miles placebo we're uh we're quick learners really [Music] all right so we're about seven or eight miles in which means we're about three hours of walking in so this we found is the perfect time to take our lunch break just right along the path there's nothing really around you but still there's about a hundred people here they normally have sandwiches for about four dollars and we're also gonna get some coffee and tea all in all it's a nice rest break and i think it's absolutely necessary for some of the longer walking days like today where you're walking 15 miles or more so all this stuff together was nine euros or like maybe 11 or so but i think the most important lesson learned is that if you can ever get the tortilla potatoes wherever you are you definitely should because look at the difference between this thing and the sandwich so this is undoubtedly the hardest part of the day which is getting back up [Music] after sitting down and having a nice lunch and not walking for a little bit how's it feel it's supposed to feel better but i don't know oh and that's the part that we're at right now because we know we have another seven eight miles to go something like that and just oh it'd be so nice to just sit in the shade at that cafe all day so basically you can emotionally break up the hike into three different experiences unfortunately the first five miles of the hike are liars either way it's lying to you and it's sort of like the first mile of going for a run either it feels like it's way too easy or it feels like it's way too hard either way it's neither of those things so today for example felt super easy the first five miles even though it was uphill we were just kind of chugging along it was it felt good and then the second part of your hike is normally feeling pretty good you just took a break but you're starting to feel sluggish because you ate too much food and then the third part of the hike the last third of it is just awful it's hot it's sunny there's no escape from it and it just feels like it goes on forever the camino is definitely super humbling in many ways a lot of people asked us before we started and even during the camino have you been training are you used to walking this much and i remember thinking no but we've been walking 10 miles a day in italy and in paris and we think oh we're generally fit people not like this super humbling in a good way and also just amazing to know how much your body can adapt in just a few days but also how your body can break down in just a few days and somehow almost as if magic the last mile goes by super fast and then all of a sudden you start seeing signs that you're like oh alice are they wait we're here and very soon comes my absolute favorite part of the day no question and a cold beer after walking 16 miles in the sun is the greatest beverage on planet earth it's just the perfect thing after 16 mile walk now we'll check into the hotel and take the coldest shower we possibly can and pass out for an hour too we forgot to say the best part is taking off the shoes oh yes yeah the glorious feeling of taking off the shoes after walking all day and then if i'm really lucky unlucky lisa will give me a massage [Music] [Music] you know believe it or not this the weather that we got out here where it's overcast borderline raining slash drizzling is the perfect weather it's the weather that you pray for when you start this walk so we're starting our walk today from palestine and then we're gonna head to melide and today is one of the shortest if not the shortest walking day that we've had for the entirety of the trip our walk today is about 15 kilometers and for most people today's walk is honestly the longest walk they'll go about twice as far even a little further than that because we wanted to slow down and take it easy and and honestly just enjoy more of the cities and the towns that are on the camino we decided to break what would typically be a full day into two days [Music] as we're walking along this last portion of the camino we see cafes and restaurants and just random stop areas where you can get a stamp it's kind of fun to collect more stamps as you [Music] go oh wow so we stopped at this really cool roadside cafe right along the camino in casanova and i think it's just called the casanova cafe everything here has been absolutely great and honestly we needed a little bit of breakfast and we have all the time in the world so why not stop most excitingly i think i might have finally gotten a breakfast that isn't just a giant baguette with some they actually had bacon and eggs and that makes me very very happy [Music] [Applause] yay we're under 60 kilometers there is something about today that just makes me feel really really happy to walk i think it's because we just decided we would go at our own pace and we finally figured out our way we were in la grono and we walked maybe 28 29k and we decided to stay an extra night that was a light bulb moment for us that was when we realized oh yeah we don't have to follow the suggested itinerary we don't have to do what everyone else does in a lot of ways the camino is just teaching us more life lessons go at your own speed go at your own pace do things your way don't compare yourself to other people thank you [Music] the camino's such an amazing way to see parts of spain that you probably never would have seen before you get to see all these villages that you just would never think to go to unless you're walking or biking oh wow very nice this place is definitely one of the nicest place we've stayed at on the camino there's a shared living room we have our own bathroom which i think this might be the first place in the entire camino that we haven't had a shared bathroom it's a luxury for sure as we're nearing the end of the camino we thought we might do something completely different for today's video we noticed that on the camino we've become so reliant on checking the apps we've been checking the weather we use it of course to film and we also have been using it when we're just bored listening to podcasts listening to music so we decided that today we would just focus on walking buen camino airplane mode [Music] this one says 50 kilometers come on hi [Music] funkamino it's warm huh oh my god lisa what air conditioning yes [Music] so there's a saying on the camino and it's that the camino provides and i think this is kind of true but i think the more accurate saying is that the camino giveth and the camino taketh away and when i say it takes i mean to get to the point where we're at where we're starting to feel a bit more at peace with this process you have to sacrifice and that sacrifice for us was letting go of our fear of boredom letting go of our fear of fomo just finally being able to be here doing this thing and not think about doing something else and i think the sacrifice is in some ways required for every person that does the camino but i also think that it'll be absolutely different for every person that does the camino so when i say the camino giveth and the camino taketh away it uh well it definitely requires a sacrifice but i'd say it's worth it [Music] for me the camino has been taking away many things like my shyness and in return it gives me cool new friends the camino also took me out of my comfort zone and my fear of speaking spanish and in return it gives me amazing delicious yummy food and cervezas i am so happy to see you so when you hear things like you have to sacrifice in order to receive i don't know these these things that you receive in return are well worth the sacrifice and turns out are not really sacrifices to begin with you just think that they are [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] okay something super bizarre but kind of wonderful just happened we were walking through the town of puerto rozo the town that we're staying in for the evening and we walked all the way across the town because that's where pension or accommodations were we got in front of the door we rang the doorbell a few times nobody answered rang it again nobody answered so finally we gave the number a call a woman answered in spanish and i said hola estamos aqui and she said oh okay ballet we'll be there soon maybe five to ten minutes and then this car pulls up a woman and a man come out and they say basically in spanish you can stay here or you can go to another place in the middle of the town and we thought what huh you can stay closer to the center of the town there's more restaurants there's more food there would you like to go if so get in the car and i looked at josh and i thought sure why not we threw our packs in the back of the trunk they drove us all the way to the middle of town where we had just walked through let us out and walked us up to this room turns out this pencil has three different accommodations across the town and they said this is the best one the room is quite beautiful and she's definitely right it's close to all the restaurants and all the food it was just such a funny and weird but also great experience and i loved that even though neither of us spoke each other's language super well we we made it there and we got to this amazing accommodation man just one day left we just sat down for dinner at this amazing terrace and i think our mindsets the way we're feeling right now shows how much of a change we've had about how we feel about the camino 14 days ago hedgie said you only got one day left we would have been wow celebrating like yeah i can't believe it like yeah i'm so excited to be done i'm so tired of walking but now honestly with only one day left we're both kind of feeling like we're gonna miss it this is it our final day of walking the day started just like every other day waking up early checking to see if our clothes were dry is any of it dry yet not really finding out they're still wet quickly brushing our teeth and splashing our face with water slowly putting on our shoes and packs grabbing our walking sticks and heading out the door as we leave ol pedrozo it becomes clear just how close we are we're just under 20 kilometers to santiago it almost doesn't feel real and in fact it definitely doesn't feel real [Music] but as soon as we get on the trail the routine kicks in it's automatic by now we have our usual chunk of bread for breakfast we fill up our water bottles we're greeted by the sounds of buen camino from everybody we come across but something about this day feels a little different there's a certain hop in our step we're walking much faster and there are not only many more pedigrinos walking but there are mounted police patrolling the area it feels just a little bit more intense and official than the previous days [Music] on the one hand there's a huge sense of urgency to get there quicker go straight there we're so close we didn't even take breaks this day then there's a feeling of anticipation what is it going to feel like when we arrive in santiago and there's also that sense of hesitation we don't know if we want this to end i think that's santiago i think we can actually see it for the first time yes and just like that signs of life excitement [Music] this is santiago we're in santiago i think it's i don't know i think it it's still a little hard to believe it just feels like really are we are we are we there we're almost it's like right there i think i think i'm feeling the exact same way after walking 200 miles or 320 something kilometers over the past two and a bit weeks it uh it's hard to feel like it's over we just got used to the rhythm of this thing and i feel like we just sort of figured out how to make it really enjoyable so uh disbelief is the is the mood right now [Music] santiago is a crowd of pilgrims waiting patiently their turn to take a picture in front of what feels like a finish line at a marathon this big sign welcomes you in but to our surprise and to our feet dread we had to keep walking a lot oh sure just another hill the cathedral and where santiago is is still quite far from the outskirts of the town the crowds of people ebbed and flowed intermixed with pilgrims tourists and locals alike it felt like we pilgrims were infiltrating a town that has become so used to pilgrims we appeared kind of to be a nuisance an annoyance almost getting in their ways as we're walking in or they're so used to it that we just blend into the landscape [Music] we start to hear the sound of people and music and we finally reach the cathedral square [Music] this is where we knew we had reached our final stop we made it we made it we took some mandatory pictures we gave high fives hugs and kisses all around then we both looked at each other looked around blankly [Music] the cathedral was surrounded by pilgrims just like us feeling tired feeling weary confused shocked and uncertain what now was the prevailing feeling it felt a little empty [Music] we made our way to our hotel and received a warm welcome from our host we got our final stamps and walked up a flight of stairs to our room we almost forgot our walking sticks as if they knew their jobs were done but luckily our host reminded us he pointed out the collection of follows or walking sticks that have been since left or donated to his albertge we laughed we aren't forgetting these ones we got into our rooms took off our packs for the final time took off our shoes and socks one final time and we were in a daze how did our final day end so quickly and now that we're here what what do we do was what we were feeling what we were expecting to feel what should we be feeling we thought we would feel more celebratory we were excited to come to santiago but it seemed like no one else was excited that we had arrived honestly it made us feel a little bit down and empty maybe it was because we were hungry and tired we hadn't taken any breaks so like we always did we went downstairs had some delicious beige food and beers from our albertge who's turning it it's yours she used to finishing and making it to santiago huh cheers to the camino it has returned we went to go pick up the mochila or the backpack that we had shipped for picking up our mochila our backpack and uh not sure how you feel about it i don't know if i want those things back gracias when we made it back per protocol we took a big old siesta [Music] when we woke up it started to downpour i was feeling really really glad that we finished our walk when we did but i also wondered what does this rain signify if anything after the rain stopped we re-emerged and decided we would walk around again give the town and our feelings another chance to redeem themselves [Music] but we couldn't quite capture what we were feeling disconnected why did we walk the camino again was walking the camino something to celebrate how do we move on from this everything just seemed a little bit off and we had so many questions [Music] the next morning we decided to check out the pilgrims office to get our camino diploma or the compostela that proves that you walked on an official camino we had heard and read many things about this place mostly that it's similar to your local dmv office lines out the door apathetic staff disorganization all of that we weren't even sure if we wanted our compostelas to be honest out of curiosity we made our way there we were pleasantly surprised honestly a small queue some inspection of our stamps and dates a couple of questions about our routes and then we received our certificates free of charge at that they asked for our full names and explained that our certificates were to be printed in latin my name was no longer lisa it was elizabeth [Music] to all the sedalis and pilgrims for the sake of devotion about the threshold of st james our possible spain and protectionists coming together is going to to make known that they have made the full trip and the visit for those of you who have seen the martin sheen movie about the camino called the way no one asked the reason we walked how the experience was there was no music it was all very transactional and official handles and bright candles and light like noon shiner we spent the rest of our day in santiago honestly in a little bit of a rut eager to move on to the next adventure but a little bit dissatisfied with the way this one ended maybe we had too many expectations of the camino and of santiago the endpoint the destination but maybe it wasn't even about that at all we had been preparing and thinking about the camino for over three months now ever since we first heard about it back when we were still living in hawaii the camino was the quest the journey we knew we wanted and needed from the moment our friend dan first shared it with us but as we approached santiago it still felt like the quest and journey we wanted and needed we just didn't know what to expect when we reached the end of it [Music] the next morning we got up and got ready to go to our next destination i'm kind of excited to have my bag back but i'm also kind of sad and i'm also kind of sad to get rid of my decathlon bag it was a good pack just a end of an era it feels like yoga strap i never used sleep liners are you sure you don't want to keep this definitely sure gotta go we're gonna go see if we can donate some of the things that we have and also leave our follows or our walking sticks a little bummed i would say that understanding the change that walking the camino brought into your life is difficult to impossible to do while you are actually walking it it's sort of like trying to process a death in the family or what it was like during your own wedding day you're so busy during it figuring out logistics talking to people taking care of things that you don't actually take any time while it's happening to really feel any of it the end of the camino is a lot like that you've been so busy walking every day trying to not get lost meeting new people figuring out the restaurant system booking your next few night stays being tired over and over again that maybe like us you didn't really process the experience that you went through until the very very end [Music] and after searching online we found out that this is perfectly normal and exactly what a place like the pilgrims house is for so we're hanging out here at the pilgrims house and originally we just came by this place to see if they would take a donation of all the extra stuff that we bought for the camino but don't really need any more for the rest of our trip to see if it would be useful for them or for somebody else who's about to take the same pilgrimage that we did and honestly what we found was so much more amazing than just a place for donations in fact that's definitely not what this place is even for i really wish that this was the first place that we went to it's a place just for pilgrims just for people like us who just finished walking the super long thing you make it into santiago and then you're kind of greeted with indifference you walk into the first thing that they say is congratulations wow i mean like welcome wow what a thing you did and hearing that for the first time after doing all this just warmed my heart it feels like it was something that i was kind of waiting for for a while and honestly once you first get into santiago the first thing that you feel is just what do i do now not just because you finished with something but because you feel like there should be something to wrap up the quest that you were on some sort of way to make sense of the whole thing that you just went through and especially considering the jarring juxtaposition between walking for 10 to 15 miles at a time and not really seeing another human or just only a handful of other humans to all of a sudden making it into this big super busy city and then just starting to feel like you're a small bit into this bigger thing instead of the very introspective inner journey that you've been having for the past couple of weeks to months that's where the pilgrims house steps in they just have this group chat of all the new programs that have come in to help them sort of decompress and talk about their experiences of going on the camino we have to leave for a bus in about half an hour and i'm really really sad because it's the place that we didn't know that we even needed let's rewind for a moment this moment this moment right here we're feeling a little bit discouraged this one especially [Laughter] was the moment that we almost threw in the towel and quit the camino not sure what to do looking back at this the problems that we were facing at that moment seemed so unimportant so small i'm so glad that we didn't quit was the camino harder than we thought it would be hey why do i have to walk up hill and do this it's getting legitimately cold out here absolutely physically we were unprepared for sure but mentally we weren't anywhere close to ready for the pathway ahead of us on that first day i mean we almost quit we almost did none of this so magical horses on both sides they're beautiful ginormous you'll very likely feel the same way somewhere along the way if you want to quit truly that's fine there's absolutely no shame in that but i would urge you with this one thing with the camino to at least take a few moments before you decide to quit and think about what is making it so hard maybe your expectations were too high for reality to ever have a chance to catch up maybe you're approaching this thing in the wrong way too fast never taking buses not talking to enough people talking to too many people being on your phone too much not being on your phone enough having too much wine not having enough wine whatever it is just give it some thought more than likely you're just not doing the kamino your way you're likely doing it someone else's way maybe you saw something on instagram that makes it seem like every day is supposed to be beautiful and easy or heard something from a friend where they said that you have to do all this all at once or walk 15 plus miles in a day or even something in this video right here that didn't vibe with the experience that you want to have take a step back and do this thing your way drop other people's expectations and see if you still want to quit i'm willing to bet that you won't if you do decide to do the camino de santiago you'll very likely run into everyone you talk to about it having a very strong opinion about the right way to do it you'll hear stuff like you're only a real pilgrim if you walk all the way from saint john or if you skip any part you're a fake pilgrim or if you stay in any hotels you're not doing it right advice on advice and advice most of it well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful i mean we made videos about every single day of our camino as we did it and just look what people said about us in the way that we did it so i'm here to say once and for all to you that there is no wrong way to do the camino as long as it's your way it doesn't matter why you do it or for how long or by which method of transportation or which path you take they're all right as long as it's the way that you decide [Music] [Music] as we left santiago in the camino we felt a bit more at ease especially after leaving the pilgrims house honestly the abrupt ending was so jarring that it forced us to stop and wonder what we were missing if there was ever a better allegory to the idea of it being about the journey not the destination it's how the camino de santiago ends [Music] [Music] but as we learned the camino giveth and it taketh away it's really impossible to share what you take away from the kamino completely it taught us not to look outward rather always inward to expect external validation was probably flawed to begin with [Music] and to get there we had to sacrifice our need for constant entertainment [Music] and what did we get for that sacrifice a true understanding of what it means to say it's all about the journey not the destination [Music]

Channel: Lisa and Josh

Views: 570,454

Keywords: travel, adventure, lisa and josh, josh and lisa, lisa josh, josh lisa, camino, camino de santiago, the way

Id: ON1f0Iw2KL4

Length: 80min 15sec (4815 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 20 2022